Now Playing:

Jonathan Cavier – Comes a Moment

URL: http://caviermusic.com/
Jonathan Cavier has an impressive life. Cavier, of course, is an enormously talented musician and composer, but he’s also a talented semi-professional tennis player. His music, even since his early days as one half of the pop duo EyeTalk, manifests the same creativity energy required for athletic competition. The latest single from his solo debut album Premier is a track entitled “Comes a Moment” and the lyrical material has tremendous eloquence and spiritual energy, but it remains very accessible throughout its three minutes and fifty seconds duration. The production on this track, like the rest of the cuts on Premier, is stellar and does an excellent job layering the vocals and instrumentation with great artistry and an ear towards balance. Cavier’s avowed influences don’t really come through on this song and that’s a fantastic thing – it means that Cavier has transformed those influences through his own personality and unique vision.

This is a song about turning corners in life and Cavier’s voice inhabits with equal parts experience and musical excellence. His voice is one of the warmest, most deeply felt vocal instruments in pop music today and he never takes any short cuts to earn the listener’s attention. There are no pyrotechnics here or explosive displays of vocal power. Instead, Cavier concentrates on the needed phrasing to emphasize the song’s themes and how close they are to his heart. He does a fantastic job of tailoring his voice to serve the arrangement and they achieve an early unity that the song never surrenders. The lyrical content has unquestionable elegance and some striking turns of phrase. It references some tropes that all listeners will recognize, but there isn’t a single second that sacrifices originality in favor of cliché. Instead, Cavier recasts those moments as hooks for the listener to help make his personal experience even more accessible. Autobiographical songwriting is a tricky thing. While listeners can admire the bravery of an artist bearing the details of their life for listeners, grounding it too deeply in the specific details of their life can shut the audience out of sharing the performer’s emotions. Cavier, however, achieves a near perfect balance and few of his listeners will have any difficulty relating to the material.

The arrangement gives the lyrics an ideal forum for getting over with his listeners. Cavier is often labeled a pop artist, but “Comes a Moment” never panders for attention. This is a work firmly ensconced in the singer/songwriter tradition and forgoes any flash in favor of connecting with the audience. The acoustic guitar, rhythm section, and mid-tempo speed come together in the opening moments and move towards the inevitable conclusion with a dollop of physicality that keeps the listener engaged. Jonathan Cavier’s newest single is a memorable track that has commercial appeal without any gimmickry. “Comes a Moment” sounds like a work ripped from the pages of his life, but it’s never a drag to hear and will ultimately raise listeners up with its hopefulness.